the angel of history hovers
caduceus lion-head and winged
above the twin cups of the lovers
thunderstruck from knowing everything
and bound by double serpents of time:-
not nice - this male sphinx beats out rhythms
for the eschaton as his flight climbs
the ages surmounting all schism
and ruin - as for the bolt on his breast
he is struck by knowledge of his end
that time itself is brought to the test -
the bound flier having to descend
and remember by force of creation
a god’s version of our immolation
Oxford
2 May 2018
A further reflection on the Mithraeum at Bloomberg in London and other mithraea I have seen in Rome. Some contain a statue of a snake-bound lion-headed winged figure carrying two keys ( like St Peter or a pope) and bearing a thunderbolt sign on its chest. Some of these statues ( such as one at Ostia) carry the name “Ahriman”. Even if this is the Ahriman of Zoroastrian theology, we might not understand what the image means because even the figure of Mithras differs in the Graeco-Roman world from its Iranian contexts. I am also conflating this leontocephaline statue with the ” Two of Cups” card in Tarot cards.
So I have used this image to contribute to the reflections on “the Angel of History” that have been inspired by ” Angelus Novus” painting of 1920 by Paul Klee (1879 -1940), which Gerschom Scholem (1897 -1982) Walter Benjamin ( 1892 -1940) and Paul Ricoeur ( 1913 -2005) and others have written about.